


The Secret to Staying Alive

by Star_Going_Supernova



Series: Heart & Soul AU [5]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Heart & Soul AU, Henry's Home for Inky Children, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sequel, oh boy here we go again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 21:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16354481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: Some things can’t stay hidden forever. It’s not the past that’s been uncovered, it’s a whole new section of the studio that they didn't even know existed. And Henry’s never been able to leave well enough alone.Or: Henry's not out of trouble yet. The nightmare's only just begun.





	The Secret to Staying Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy first anniversary of _The Art of Being Alive!_ It’s officially been a full year since I posted the first chapter, so it seemed fitting to begin posting the sequel on the same day. 
> 
> To returning readers: welcome back, great to see you. :D
> 
> To newcomers: this won’t make a lick of sense if you haven’t read the first part of this series, _The Art of Being Alive._ If that’s not a problem, then it’s lovely to have you here!

“Henry!”

If the sound of his bedroom door slamming into the wall or his name being shouted in half a dozen different voices hadn’t woken him up, the numerous bodies throwing themselves on top of him would have.

The air whooshed out of Henry’s lungs as his eyes shot open, all hope of more sleep lost to the ink. Bendy beamed at him from his chest.

Ignoring his loud, wiggling accomplices, Bendy told him, “You gotta get up, Henry! C’mon, you’ll miss the party!”

Swallowing his good-natured laughter, Henry curled an arm around Bendy and rolled over, effectively trapping him and several others beneath his body.

“I think I’ll just go back to sleep for a little longer,” he said, yawning dramatically.

He was met with giggles, and he buried his face into his pillow to hide the wide smile pulling at his cheeks.

It’d been a year, a full twelve months to the day, that everything had happened. Funny enough, the toons had come to the unanimous agreement not to celebrate the day of Joey’s death, but the day of Henry’s arrival. It had been Henry’s suggestion, and his excuse had been that he knew the day he’d shown up, but no one was exactly sure of the exact date when everything had come to an end.

Henry had seen the look on Norman’s face when they’d been talking about it, though. His old friend, at least, had realized the truth: no matter what Joey had been like in the end, Henry would never have it in him to celebrate the day of his murder, at Henry’s hand, no less.

And now that anniversary had arrived. Henry could hardly believe how different things had been since then. To think, only a year earlier, Henry hadn’t had even the faintest idea that the toons existed, or that Joey had horrible plans for him, or that he’d eventually go through hell to save his new friends.

He only had a few regrets about the whole thing. Several employees that had been sacrificed hadn’t been found, Wally being one of them. Losing Susie with ‘Alice’ still caused guilt to spread through Henry. Sammy never even had a chance to be saved. Joey…

Perhaps it was better for his thoughts about Joey to be left unsaid. Simply put, he didn’t regret killing him, not exactly, but he wished that it hadn’t been necessary. But there was so much more to it than that.

Regardless, the toons had been freed and everyone was safe now. The studio had never looked better, after a year’s worth of renovations had almost entirely erased the old horrors. It was functional, cozy in its own way, and—most importantly—not covered in ink.

It was a giant, one-of-a-kind playground of a home, for a giant, one-of-a-kind family.

Lost in his fond thoughts, Henry was defenseless when several toons dug their fingers into his ticklish sides. As he flailed to get away from them—laughing hard enough for the lights in his room to flicker, the studio forever in tune with his emotions—Bendy and the others he’d trapped beneath him burst free.

With war cries echoing down the hall, they scrambled out of the room, calling for Henry to hurry up and follow them.

Breathless, Henry did his best to obey. He made it out of bed and into his robe and slippers, smiling all the while at the sound of life permeating the very walls.

It was with a bounce in his step that he headed for his half-open door.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, the happy chatter stopped. The pulse of their heartbeats, always lingering comfortingly just beneath Henry’s skin, froze. And Henry turned to face a long, empty hallway that was very, very dark at the end.

His eyes flickered back and forth, searching for movement, for the click of a door closing, for the creak of floorboards being stepped on.

There was only silence. Still, roaring silence.

“Guys?” Henry called, taking a step forward.

Even the studio’s life, the warmth of which he’d taken much longer to get used to, was absent. Cold, even.

“Yeah, you got me,” Henry said, walking forward a little faster. The darkness seemed to stretch towards him, and for a moment, he could’ve sworn it writhed like ‘Bendy’s wall shadows. “Real funny, you little jokesters.”

Usually, this was when he’d be swarmed by excited toons, laughing and smiling up at him as if their prank had been the cleverest thing Henry could’ve ever seen. But there was nothing.

Henry finally stopped, unwilling to get any closer to the shadows. What was going on? Was he dreaming? But—even in his most horrible, unbelievable dreams, he’d never actually been able to think they were dreams. It had never actually crossed his mind.

“Bendy?

He turned around, ready to head the opposite way in an effort to find someone, anyone, but before he could take a single step, the low, slow creak of a door opening had goosebumps raising on his arms.

Just past his bedroom was a door barely cracked open, with an empty, pitch black space facing him. Henry swallowed nervously, though he walked towards it all the same. It felt familiar, somehow, deadly and scary and why was he expecting to choke on ink?

He pushed the door open the rest of the way, and hated how his breath caught in his throat.

In the center of the room was a pentagram, and in the center of the pentagram was a chair. He could almost hear Joey’s sickly sweet voice, drenched in victory, say _So nice of you to join us, my friend. Won’t you take a seat? You look like you could use a nice, long break._

Unlike that day—that day when he’d killed his former friend, only to die, only to live—the sole light in the room came in the form of a spotlight shining down on the chair. He still didn’t know exactly what Joey had intended to do to him had he sat in it.

The door clicked shut behind him even though Henry had no memory of walking into the room.

It was too easy to remember how nervous he’d been, how close death had been to taking him, how the thought of finishing off Joey once and for all had torn with too-true certainty through his heart.

He briefly squeezed his eyes shut. This was supposed to be a happy day, a celebration in remembrance of the day that set so many things in motion. He’d already gone through his near-daily regrets from that time, and he wasn’t ready to do it again, much less mourn the double death of his friend—of the man he’d known and then of the monster he’d become— for the nth time.

When Henry opened his eyes, the chair was gone, and the pentagram was leaking blood. Feeling rooted to the spot, he watched the blood pool out, some areas decaying into ink.

It wasn’t the worst he’d ever seen, honestly. There were so many nightmares over the years of his life that struck far more terror in his heart than this. He opened his mouth to say something, perhaps to himself or maybe to the studio, either way—he’d never find out.

Liquid rushed up his throat, simultaneously filling his lungs. The stench of ink and blood filled his nose, and his body reacted instinctively, trying to cough and vomit it out.

_Not again! Not this again, please, no—_

As quickly as it came, the liquid was gone. Beneath the sound of his panicked gasping, Henry could’ve sworn he heard cruel, cold laughter.

He desperately reached out for the comfort of the vast studio in his mind-space, only to encounter a gaping void. The entire web of his creations was gone, ripped out like it had never existed at all. Panic clawing at his throat more efficiently than the ink ever did, he whispered, “It’s just a dream. A nightmare.”

With the ink-infused blood lapping against his slippers, Henry shakily eyed the shadowed corners of the room. Something that felt like a hand wrapped around his left ankle. Henry refused to look down to find out whose it was.

“None of this is real,” he continued, a mantra to guide him back into the real, waking world with his sanity in tact. “Everyone is safe. I’m safe. And…”

There was that laughter again, a warm breath splashing against the back of his neck.

Finally, Henry whispered, “Joey Drew is dead.”

Hands clamped down on his shoulders, jagged nails digging into Henry’s flesh. _“Am I?”_

Something moved in Henry’s peripheral vision.

“Henry?”

At the sound of Bendy’s confused voice, he snapped his head towards it. In a moment of sheer disorientation, he found himself not in the pentagram room, but in the hallway facing a closed door.

Down the corridor, Bendy and a few others watched him, the group collectively shuffling their feet and wringing their hands in worry. They stared at Henry, and for a long moment, Henry stared back.

“Are you all right?” Bendy finally asked. “You looked super zoned out.”

The threads of life pulsed in his mind. For a moment, Henry dipped into the essence of the studio, feeling every known inch, every little soul he’d saved. The warmth surrounded him like a hug, familiar and wonderful. The tense line of his shoulders relaxed, and the breath he’d been unconsciously holding escaped in a relieved sigh.

“Don’t worry about me, bud,” Henry said, glancing at the door in front of him. “Just got a little lost in thought is all.” He made an effort to shove the horrible—what, vision? Hallucination? Burst of insanity?—aside, smiling at them.

Likely just as eager to move on, they beamed back at him.

Henry cast one last glance at the door, resisting the urge to open it. He was probably just tired or something. Maybe one of his nightmares had bled over into his waking mind. Turning away, he headed towards Bendy.

“C’mon, we shouldn’t keep the others waiting.” Henry offered his hand once he was close enough, and Bendy gratefully latched onto him.

The voice, the hallucination, the whole thing was forgotten as Henry rounded the far corner, surrounded by his toons.

And no one was there to watch as ink, with an almost iridescent shine to it, slowly seeped out from the crack at the bottom of the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins! I’m pretty excited about the plan I have for this story, but be warned: it’s definitely not canon-compliant, even less so regarding Chapter 4 and 5. I do plan on waiting to see Chapter 5’s footage in order to hopefully incorporate some of it into this story.
> 
> As far as an updating schedule goes, I’d really like to do one per week on Saturday, but I think the next chapter might take a little longer. I’m still working out some kinks in the outline, and like I said, I want to see Chapter 5 before I get too deep.
> 
> Let me know what you thought (you guys know the drill!) and [check out my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) if you’re interested! I’ll see you guys soon! :D


End file.
